Dee Milliner Returns to Jets in Time for Encounter With Aaron Rodgers

FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — Rex Ryan and John Idzik stood beside the aerial lift separating the Jets’ two practice fields and fixed their gaze on the player wearing a green jersey, No. 27. There was Dee Milliner, in a helmet and shoulder pads, doing all the things that cornerbacks — healthy cornerbacks — are supposed to do.

He backpedaled. He sprinted. He shadowed receivers. He caught passes. He accomplished these tasks with aplomb, without grabbing at the left ankle he sprained a month ago Wednesday, so after practice Ryan declared that he was “cautiously optimistic” that Milliner would play Sunday at the Green Bay Packers.

“Look around,” Ryan said, referring to the depleted secondary. “If he can play in a limited role, let’s play him in a limited role.”

The Jets need Milliner as much as they need Antonio Allen, or Darrin Walls, or Kyle Wilson, or Muhammad Wilkerson, or Sheldon Richardson, or Calvin Pryor, or anyone, really, who can help contain Aaron Rodgers, one of the league’s elite quarterbacks, and the Packers’ prolific up-tempo offense.

Ryan said he relished the challenge of devising a game plan to frustrate Rodgers. Sort of.

“I’d like to see us play Delbarton or somebody,” Ryan said, referring to a local high school team.

Alas, no luck there. No prep schools, not this week or any other. The schedule tells the Jets to play in Wisconsin, so they will, for their first trial against a team with excellent receivers, a strong running game and a non-rookie at quarterback. In other words, not the Raiders.

How the Jets confused Derek Carr on Sunday, when they limited Oakland to 11 yards over an eight-series stretch (and 158 over all), will not work against Rodgers, who manipulates the pocket as well as any quarterback in the N.F.L. In his last 30 starts at Lambeau Field in which he has thrown at least 10 passes, the Packers are 28-2 and Rodgers has a 112.4 passer rating, 75 touchdowns and 17 interceptions.

“Anytime you have a creative schemer like Rex,” Rodgers said in a teleconference Wednesday, “you can come up with some stuff that you just don’t see all of the time with the different personnel packages they put out there and types of looks, fronts and pressures behind it. They have a lot of variance in their pressures and in their coverages.”

Ryan said that Rodgers combined “accuracy with escapability,” and from his film study Richardson said he did not watch the rush; he sensed it. He feels the pocket closing in, if it does, and relies on footwork, his shiftiness, to work through his progressions.

“He’s a great quarterback,” Richardson said. “But no one likes pressure.”

The Jets generated pressure against Carr, a lot of pressure, sacking him twice and chasing him out of the pocket. The Seahawks, in their 36-16 victory against Green Bay in Week 1, generated pressure against Rodgers, a lot of pressure. And they did so with a four-man rush, without blitzing, by rotating in pass-rusher after pass-rusher.

“It’s not about what Seattle did,” Wilkerson said. “It’s about our game plan.”

As for that game plan, Ryan said he would review the Jets’ approach the last time the teams played, in 2010, when they lost, 9-0, but held Green Bay to its lowest point total in a game that Rodgers started and finished since he took over as quarterback in 2008. But, Ryan added, the personnel has changed so much, for both sides, that the same strategy does not apply.

The Jets, for instance, started Antonio Cromartie and Darrelle Revis at cornerback that afternoon. On Sunday, they will start some combination of Milliner, Allen and Walls, with Wilson manning the slot. Assuming he is cleared, Milliner figures to start, and though Allen and Walls each fared well last week, Ryan lavishes so much praise on Allen — his ball skills, his tackling, his athleticism, all on display against Oakland — that it is hard to imagine that he would not start on the other side.

A strong training camp, coupled with his encouraging end of last season, reinforced to Ryan — not that he needed much convincing — that Milliner was ready to elevate his play once again and become a No. 1 corner. And then, in one of a few incidents that exposed the cornerback corps’ vulnerability, he sustained a high ankle sprain during a drill on Aug. 10.

Milliner missed the final three preseason games, so these practices are not unlike, to a degree, a continuation of training camp for him.

“I haven’t been out there in a while,” Milliner said. “I have to get back to normal and get back in a rhythm.”

Milliner has two practices remaining to get back to normal. Then comes Sunday, when, if he plays, he said, he has no excuses for not performing well.

“If I’m out there,” Milliner said, “expect the most out of me.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B18 of the New York edition with the headline: Milliner Returns in Time for Encounter With Rodgers. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe